


Hold Me Fast; Fear Me Not

by Zetared



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, M/M, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 14:56:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19396486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zetared/pseuds/Zetared
Summary: There are more things in Heaven (and Hell) and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Aziraphale and Crowley find themselves unwilling guests of the fae.





	Hold Me Fast; Fear Me Not

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for the sole purpose of whumping on Crowley. Title from The Ballad of Tam Lin. Crowley goes through a lot in this, and some of it is quite grim. Please take care of yourselves.

He looks into blue eyes as clear as glass, empty as eternity, vast and dark and without end. Crowley only has eyes for Aziraphale, standing in the light of a flickering torch, eyes utterly blank and yet the same, the same shape, the same color, the same, the same. Crowley clings to that familiarity like a drowning man. It’s all he has.

\--

“I look forward to our time together,” the Queen intones, perfectly polite. Her fingertips (too long, too tapered) brush intimately over Crowley’s cheek and jaw. He screams in shock and pain as his skin burns away where she has touched, the destruction leeching deep into his muscles, leaving his flesh ravaged and smoking as if he’s been teased with holy water fresh from the blessing place.

\--

The angel glows in the light of the fairy court. His fine, wispy white locks catch the moonlight and magnify it tenfold. Such a luminescence casts his already pale skin in an odd light--all of the color has gone out of his cheeks. He is cut free from polished white stone, unnerving in his lack of blemish and warmth. 

Aziraphale wears the garb of a favored fae subject. Fine silks the color of a robin’s egg, shimmering lace rendered from spiders’ webs, tunic adorned with jewels of opulent drops of dew that catch the light in rainbow prisms. It’s a strange and marvelous blend of forest fauna and rich, homespun threads. Golden baubles glint in the angel’s ears, and Crowley amuses himself--only for a moment--imagining Aziraphale’s indignation, later, when he finds that they’ve pierced his corporation without permission. (And, God, please let that be the extent of what they’ve done to him, in this compromised state.) 

His hat is made of large, folded leaves with a waxy shine. The ridges cradle small rose blooms, every petal pink as a pearl.

Aziraphale looks more properly ethereal than he ever has, even in the Garden and probably as far back as Heaven before it. The fae are capricious, vicious, and bizarre. But they understand and can conceptualize the horrible heights of pure inhumanity in a way that neither Aziraphale nor Crowley have ever managed, quite. 

Crowley thinks, not for the first time, that he should be taking notes. The people of the Sidhe are capable of horrors even the highest Dukes in Hell could only imagine. 

\--

They keep him restrained, keep him powerless. The thick, enchanted manacles around his wrists jingle--far too merrily, in his opinion--with every motion as he goes about his daily tasks. The demon pokes at the heavy cuffs a bit in those first few days, but there’s not enough room between the metal and his skin to do any good, anyway. The edges of the metal cut into his flesh, leave his skin broken and raw, his fingers tacky and damp with spilled blood, but there’s nothing to be done.

The Inquisitor--a grey-skinned fae with calculating eyes and an ominous title--has used strange magic to force Crowley into manifesting his wings. They remain present in the corporeal plane, now, stretched out wide, edges often brushing up against the walls.Try as he might, he can’t wench the things back in. Each large, black wing has been pierced through with foreign objects. Crowley can’t render the wings incorporeal while they are looped through with large circlets of enchanted metal--they have no magic, now, with which to hide away. The dense rings lay heavy against the flesh of Crowley’s wings, each one about the size of the demon’s head and thick as his wrist. Three rings pierce through each wing with a precision that belies some sort of deeper purpose, though Crowley doesn’t know it and is smart enough not to ask.

\--

In his dreams, Aziraphale is always bright and warm as the sun. Not the wicked, standoffish moon-glow he now possesses, but the brilliant and beaming radiance that Crowley remembers from before their capture. Before their mistakes caught up with them and the fae court sentenced them to eternity at the mercy of the fairy queen.

It feels like its own eternity ago, that. 

Aziraphale clucks worriedly over his wounds and speaks to him softly, almost apologetically, as if somehow Crowley’s subconscious believes Aziraphale could possibly be blamed for his absence. 

“Well, you must admit it’s hardly fair,” Aziraphale tells him for the umpteenth time when Crowley, also for the umpteenth time, tells him to stop apologizing. “Me, walking about all favored and everything while you’re...where you are.”

In the dream, Crowley pulls his raw and bleeding wrists out of Aziraphale’s soft hands. “Believe me, angel,” he says, unhappily, “neither of us got a good deal, here.”

Even in his dreaming state, even in the safety of his own slumbering mind, even to an angel that is only a figment of a long memory and strong imagination, Crowley cannot bear to explain about the golden studs currently sitting in Aziraphale’s violated earlobes. 

\--

“Nice to see you.”

Aziraphale is dressed in a dark purple swath of silken fabric that wraps itself around his body rather like the old togas of Rome. The edges of the piece are stitched with thousands of tiny gold beads that catch the light of the angel’s torch in arresting ways. Crowley blinks muzzily at the shifting beams and forces himself to look away, to keep his gaze on Aziraphale’s pale face, instead. They’ve painted his cheeks with rosy powder, today, forcing the angel’s once natural color into the pallid skin. Crowley frowns to himself. 

“Y’look peaky,” the demon says, rather accusatory. “Getting thin. Surely they feed you, don’t they?”

No response, of course. Crowley looks around the empty room before stepping closer to the angel for a better look. Indeed, the angel’s cheeks are narrow, his chin coming to a decided point. Had Aziraphale access to his own mind, he could have remedied this situation with a gentle application of angelic power to his corporation--ethereal beings do not need to eat food for sustenance, their corporeal forms can thrive on their internal energies alone. But Aziraphale cannot tap into those powers with actively doing so, and the angel has no motivation unless ordered to by the Queen.

“Tell her you need to fuel up,” Crowley tells the angel, firmly. “I’m sure she has you reporting back to her. Include that little detail, would you, please? You’ll be skin and bones, otherwise. You’d think she’d pay more attention to her--.” He pauses. Calling Aziraphale a ‘pet,’ even as a way to antagonize the Queen, doesn’t sit well with his conscience. “Well.”

Crowley himself has been given water and food only in sporadic offerings, as if in afterthought every time. His own corporation isn’t faring well--while he has the mental clarity Aziraphale lacks, his demonic powers are forced out of his reach by the enchanted bindings around his wrists. He couldn’t so much as miracle up a cup of tea, currently, let alone maintain his physical form.

“You just had to see the fae realms,” Crowley drawls. It’s an unfair accusation, really. Crowley had hardly protested the idea when Aziraphale had bought it up. If anything, he’d been excited by the prospect, too. “‘Whole new opportunity!’ he says. ‘I’ve never spoken to one of them before, have you, dear?’ he says. Glad we can cross it off the bucket list, now, I suppose, but I’m definitely leaving a nasty review for Fairyland when we get home.”

Home. Crowley lifts his hands--often numb, these days, and uncomfortably bruised in their coloring--and rubs his palms against his stinging eyes. His hands feel like ice against his cheeks.

When he dreams, he experiences a tiny sliver of what he thinks of as home. The backroom of Aziraphale’s ‘shop is always warm and comfortably bright, golden-orange as with candlelight, though Aziraphale would never allow real, burning candles into his store. Aziraphale is always there, just as Crowley knows him, if a bit more receptive to Crowley’s subconscious need for touch and comfort, now.

“I’d like to talk to you about my grand plans for a heroic escape-and-rescue,” Crowley tells the angel, “But best not, eh?” Not that he actually has much of a plan at all. Still, let Queenie worry. If, indeed, she has the capacity to worry at all.

\--

When they’ve a mind to, they send Crowley to the Inquisitor.

What follows has no consistency in Crowley’s memory, afterward. He can’t process it as linear time. Instead, what remains in his consciousness is an assortment of impressions, of static images like a stack of bad polaroids. Every shot is out of focus and oddly discolored and altogether quite naff while still retaining the impression of something--something important, something powerful, something that will linger forever in the consciousness, no matter how poor the picture itself might be.

He has the faintest, strangest impression that his demonic essence was, at one point, yanked entirely free of his corporation. His own demonic soul, currently in nothing more than oozing, aching tatters, reaches reflexively out to the comforting glow of Aziraphale’s ethereal presence, wherever it might be. Aziraphale doesn’t reach back, so the attempt is entirely useless, but Crowley hardly has the presence of mind to be bothered by that small detail. 

His breath rattles in his lungs despite the fact that his lungs are healthy and he doesn’t, technically, ever need to breathe. His vision is buggered, going gray and hazy and full of spots and doing whatever else it pleases at any given time. He can’t feel the pain in his cheek and wrists, at least, but he also can barely feel the rest of his body, either. 

It’s as if he’s an oyster that’s been prized free of his shell, gnawed on a bit, and then clumsily glued back into the shell again. His true, deeper essence tries to reach out to all the proper nerve endings and receptors and whatnot housed within his human-presenting form, but it is for naught. Whatever grasp he can achieve on his body is unstable, constantly in flux. Moreover, his demonic spirit has been ravaged by forces he can’t quite remember. (In his hazy, photo-clip memories, he sees sharp, needle-like blades and grasping, tearing hands with fingers that are too long and too tapered to believe).

He closes his eyes. Or, at least, he’s mostly sure he does. He feels like a puppet with his strings rewired in all the wrong places. A tug on his arm is a tug on his toes. A swish of his fingers does nothing but turn his stomach. Nothing fits correctly. The room is unbearably cold. Or is it too hot? Whatever it is, it’s too much. 

Crowley only becomes somewhat aware of himself and his body later as he manages to roll over enough to retch violently without choking himself. The world is spinning--or maybe that’s just his confused vision?--and he’s shivering violently despite being damp with sweat.

It’s possible, Crowley thinks hazily at some point, that this is what being _ill_ feels like.

\--

“You were terribly foolish, baiting the Queen like that.”

Crowley keeps his eyes closed. Aziraphale sits on the far end of the couch. Crowley sprawls over it belly down, head in Aziraphale’s lap. He can tell by the warmth of the angel’s body heat and, more importantly, by the way the angel strokes his fingers gently through Crowley’s hair.

“Keeps her on her toes,” Crowley argues. His voice is no stronger here than when awake. His syllables bump together, jiving for space in his mouth.

“Do you have an escape plan, really?”

Crowley forces one eye open and turns his head enough to look at the angel. Aziraphale looks right, here. Soft and round and flushed pink in the warm air. The sight makes something in the demon’s chest tight, too tight to breathe around it, quite. He pulls in a deep, noisy lungful of air until the knot goes away. “I plan to escape.”

Aziraphale’s answering smile is heavy with grief in a way that makes Crowley squirm. He’s not comfortable with the idea of his subconscious being so damn dour. “Yes, I rather expected that.”

“I could have a better plan, if I wanted to,” Crowley argues, affronted.

“I’m sure you could,” Aziraphale agrees, faintly. He keeps stroking his fingers along Crowley’s scalp. Crowley presses up against the touch.

Even here, his body is shaking with chill. The fabric of the t-shirt he’s imagined himself in--far different than the simple tunic and trousers he wears as a servant of the court--is damp with sweat. He shifts his hands where they lay at his sides and hisses at the resulting sting of pain. He feels, as he always does these days, vaguely nauseated and out of step. His demonic presence has never quite lined back up with his body. It leaves him off kilter and sick in a way he can’t quite pinpoint nor seem to relieve. His wings stretch out around them, no longer bleeding but aching still where the rings sit, heavy and weighing the limbs down to the ground. 

That this state persists even in the comfort of his own sleeping mind is irritating, to say the least.

Aziraphale sits the demon up and presses the palm of one soft hand over Crowley’s forehead. The angel’s skin is blessedly dry and cool and Crowley winces in embarrassment as a soft moan escapes him at the touch. Aziraphale’s other hand immediately presses against his cheeks one by one, leeching out some of the persistent heat. 

“They plan to send you to the Inquisitor again tomorrow.”

Crowley’s breath hitches in his chest. What a strange statement for his subconscious to make. “How do I know that, exactly?” And surely he must know. He wouldn’t torture himself with the possibility of another encounter without being sure.

Aziraphale’s brows draw in with confusion. “What do you mean?”

But then someone blusters through the door of the servant’s quarters and the noise wakes him up.

\--

The Inquisitor is as inquisitive as his name suggests. In what snatches of memory Crowley possesses about their...sessions...Crowley recalls a being with intense curiosity about a species he has never before encountered. Fairies are familiar with angels, in theory, and the Queen had been especially fond of Aziraphale from the start, warmed, perhaps, by his holy light. But demons are another matter entirely, it seems. Not fit for finery and a place at the regent’s feet, yet interesting enough to pass along to the resident mad scientist.

Crowley can remember distinctly the fae’s thin fingers prodding into Crowley’s mouth, forcing his fangs to appear, his tongue to go forked, his skin to break out in scales. Crowley cannot achieve a full transformation while magically bound, but the small remnants that can be coaxed out seem to intrigue the Inquisitor, indeed. 

Crowley, muddle-headed as he feels, files that detail away for another time.

\--

When he is not sleeping or being tortured, Crowley serves at the mercy of the fairy court. He parades about at their frequent balls and festivals, bearing wine and drink on large platters. He spends hours at a time in the rooms of the court, dusting and polishing and sweeping as needed. He does what he is asked, providing whoever asks it looks like they might be capable of punishing him, otherwise.

When he lies down in the evenings, Crowley lies on his stomach and stares over at the darkness, unseeing and, yet, aware of all things. His fevered mind convinces him that he can hear the bustle of the Queen’s people, can sense the structure of the fine estate. He’d seen some of the realm, briefly, before their capture--back when Aziraphale had been all smiles, chattering endlessly about the hospitality and loveliness of their fae hosts. Ha. 

Fairies are inherently creatures of the natural world. While the servant quarters are made of stacked stones and some of the more notable rooms--the ballroom, which functions also as the Queen’s throne room, for example--are similarly constructed with floors and walls and crafted accessories, most of the realm is built of and into the existing terrain. While the Queen’s estate nestles into a large hill, the majority of her people live in homes built up the trees with woven fibre floors and branches coaxed into growing in the shape of natural walls.

The fairy realm is truly stunning. Their hosts had, indeed, been receptive and seemingly kind, at first.

In the beat of time and space between waking and dreaming, Crowley allows his dizzy mind to travel, to remember the shape of the world around him. If he can remember that, perhaps he can, eventually, escape.

It’s a weak, malformed objective, but it gives him something to cling to as time stretches long with no promise of rescue in sight. 

\--

Crowley finds himself in the dreamscape gasping in rapid, shallow lungfuls of air, his wings thrumming with sharp, stabbing sensations of pain, his whole body wracked with such violent shudders that it rattles his wings in turn, ratcheting up the levels of his agony in cumulative increments. All he can feel in that moment is the pain, all he can do is drown in it, barely able to breathe or think or--.

Aziraphale’s hands find his face, soft hands cupping his chin and cheeks. His blue eyes are wide, his expression serious. His mouth is moving and it takes Crowley several long beats to realize the angel is speaking to him. “-- _stop!_ Stop moving! Just hold _still._ Crowley, _please_ , my dear. Look at me. Listen to me. You need to breathe. Deeply, like this. With me.”

Crowley flails for a moment, unable to hear the pattern of the angel’s breath, let alone mimic it. Slowly, though, he finds the rhythm, forces himself to breathe in and out in slow, deep lungfuls of air. It does help. If nothing else, his mind clears and he finds himself able to focus on more than his body.

“I can’t,” Crowley whimpers, allowing himself the luxury of letting his head fall forward, resting more than a bit of his body weight against Aziraphale’s shoulder. The angel’s hands fall from his face to his waist, holding him up. Crowley’s wings lie limply behind him, filling up the room. “We have to get out of here. We have to get out of here, Aziraphale, I--.”

Aziraphale’s arms tighten around his waist in reaction to the rapid, high-pitched intensity of Crowley’s anxiety. “I know. I know. We will.”

Crowley lifts his arms around Aziraphale to return the embrace. Its unusual and atypical for them, this much closeness, but Crowley can’t find it in himself to feel guilty. Aziraphale need never know how much Crowley has relied on his dreamed up self, how desperate the demon has been for gentle touch from the image of a being he knows, without a doubt, he can trust.

“There might be a way.”

Crowley blinks slowly and peers up at the angel. “What are you on about?” There is no way. He would know. He’s been wracking his brain over it for ages, every night. Has his subconscious mind worked out a solution his conscious mind cannot?

“Fairies enjoy a good wager,” Aziraphale says. “You could make them a deal.”

“A...deal?” Crowley echoes. He’s thought about it, of course. But he’s a demon. He knows how deals work, how they are always weighted in favor of whoever has the power. Crowley’s power against the Queen and her people is marginal, at best.

Aziraphale smiles at him, the smile tight and quick and _nervous_ which is weird, so weird, shouldn’t he be perfectly encouraging, shouldn’t he be exactly what Crowley wants and not what he needs? “You could always cheat.”

\--

They’ve put Aziraphale in a mint green shift, today, with butterscotch colored tights. Instead of a hat, they’ve woven thin and shimmering threads into the fine strands of his hair, creating small tuffs of white-blonde, each one like a dandelion puff. His colorless, powdered cheeks and glassy blue eyes do him no favors to Crowley’s reckoning. Even so, the demon can see that, to the fae, Aziraphale is almost certainly a prized possession, as beautiful and aloof as any angel should be. Such thoughts are not entirely pleasant, if Crowley truly follows them, but it is safe enough to skim along the surface of it, to think only that Aziraphale is playing dress up and there is nothing at all sinister or frightening about that.

Crowley’s rather good at denial, as it turns out.

Crowley can never bear to touch him, even when he somehow--by the grace of God, no doubt--finds himself alone with the angel. It feels too much like an invasion, far too akin to what the fae have done, touching Aziraphale when he isn’t there to consent to it.

Instead, Crowley lifts a hand in greeting and speaks at the angel, fills their silent spaces with sound until the angel abruptly turns and disappears, summoned by some signal that Crowley himself cannot hear.

In the aftermath, Crowley leans bodily against the nearest woven wall and breathes nosily through his nose, body shuddering with pain he can’t bring himself to reveal to Aziraphale’s unseeing, uncaring eyes.

\--

Crowley sits in Aziraphale’s back room.

Crowley has just enough strength, in his dream, to pull Aziraphale to him and wrap himself up in Aziraphale’s comforting embrace. There he lies in a tangle of the two of them, alternately sobbing in fevered confusion and shuddering violently, too miserable to do more than stare out blankly at his tiny piece of paradise. Aziraphale holds on to him tightly, fingers digging in hard, as if he’s afraid Crowley will break into tiny pieces if he loosens up and, frankly, Crowley isn’t so sure the dream angel is incorrect. 

“Angel,” Crowley whines out. It’s a plea for something, though what specifically even Crowley couldn’t say. 

“It’s all right,” Aziraphale assures, but he has that tense, shaken tone to his voice he only gets when he’s out of his depth and attempting a comforting lie. “You’re all right. It’s going to be just fine, you’ll see.”

\--

Crowley stumbles during the next ball. He’s been feverish and achy all day, barely possessing enough bodily strength to attend to his chores. Now, the tiny floral teacups on their silver platter seemingly weigh as much as an elephant, more than his trembling body can bear. He falls to a knee and drops the platter, fragile petal cups spilling everywhere, going soft and bruised, their contents leaking out onto the cold marble floor.

Someone snaps at him. Someone grabs him by the elbow, pulling him back onto his resisting feet.

He falls again with no support behind him. This time, a soft-booted foot finds his ribs, kicks in one brutal motion that makes something inside of Crowley’s tender corporation snap. Crowley curls up on himself, unable to decide if it is more prudent to protect his torso or his head from further assault. 

The Queen’s voice rings out, saving him the trouble. Everything goes silent, goes still.

When they haul Crowley up on his feet again, his eyes immediately seek out Aziraphale. He finds the angel standing, rigid and unresponsive as ever, at the right hand side of the Queen’s throne. He doesn’t even so much as glance Crowley’s way. 

\--

Crowley drifts from waking to sleeping. In his waking reality, he is spread out on the Inquisitor’s table like a piece of raw meat, corporation bare, open to the air in a way that brings bile to the back of the demon’s throat. The black-eyed fae runs his gray-white hands over Crowley’s sternum. (Another photo-clip flash of memory hits the demon, then. An impression of his chest wide open, ribs spread apart, the fae’s fingers digging through the flesh and into the glowing center of his demonic presence, yanking it free.)

In his dream state, Crowley cries out, blood bubbling up from his lips with the force of the sound. He closes his eyes, unwilling to see Aziraphale’s bookshop--warm, bright, _home_ \--sullied with the flow of his own blood.

His image of Aziraphale is there, even though Crowley wants him to not be, even though Crowley tells him, over and over, begs him, really, to please go away.

Waking, Crowley hangs limply from the six sturdy rings in his wings, gravity dragging him down mercilessly, rings tearing into his flesh, pressing against hollow bones as fragile as glass. He feels the smaller bones of his carpometacarpuses crack and then shatter, the ring breaking right through it as Crowley’s weight pulls him down.

In sleeping, Aziraphale holds him tightly, holds his curled up, bleeding body in the shelter of his own corporation, his own snowy wings manifested and folded over the both of them, a barrier against the larger, more terrifying world. Crowley screams into Aziraphale’s shoulder as the bones of his wings snap, as the flesh tears away from the sturdy rings, as nothing is left to hold him up, and his body falls to the stone floor, wings as tattered as his demonic essence.

Black feathers fill the back room of the bookshop. The air smells cloying and thick with blood as it flows free of his sundered flesh, staining the carpets and baseboards. Crowley breathes damply through his mouth in deep, sobbing breaths. He leaves Aziraphale’s jumper wet through with saliva and tears, but the angel doesn’t seem to care. He just clings to the demon, shushes his screams, assures him with words of comfort that have no meaning at all. 

When he feels himself start to wake for good, Crowley’s fingernails dig hard into the fabric of the angel’s coat (white, once but now stained brown-red, a stain that cannot be remedied with a simple miracle because it, like the angel who wears it, isn’t real). “No, please,” he begs to no one, “Don’t make me go. I don’t want to go. Aziraphale!”

\--

The pain is…

Crowley lies where he has been unceremoniously abandoned, in the corner of the Inquisitor’s grisly lab. It’s possible the fae thought he’d have the good sense to die from what’s been done. But Crowley suspects his corporation can’t be killed, right now, not as long as his demonic essence remains separated from it, not as long as the enchanted manacles are there, keeping it alive.

Crowley realizes he’s not alone in the room.

Aziraphale stands as he always does, rigid as a board and staring into space. They’ve dressed him a mellow beige tunic and simple, deer-brown trousers. The look is so demure, so unprepossessing, that it sends a shock of fear all through Crowley’s battered body. He tries to push himself into a sitting position but fails, too weak to support himself and the dead weight of his tattered, tacky wings by his arms alone. 

To his shock, Aziraphale approaches. Aziraphale loops his hands under Crowley’s armpits and pulls him upright, holds him steady until he can hold himself up. Then, he steps back. Nothing has otherwise changed. He continues to stand, seemingly ignoring the demon completely.

Tears burn in Crowley’s sinuses. He swallows the impulse down and simply stares at Aziraphale. “She ordered you to do that, huh?” he asks, though it pains him to admit it. “What did she tell you to do, specifically, I wonder?”

Crowley prods at his body. His torso is a mess of bruising, probably a good indication that the low grind he feels inside is, indeed, a fractured rib. He’s naked and cold, covered in blood and feathers. He feels as vaguely sick as he has since the Inquisitor's first session, but the real trouble is, of course, his ravaged wings. “Should...try and cut them off,” he manages in a low slur. His vision wavers for a moment, and he blinks it back. “S’easier then...maintaining what’s left. Isn’t it?” he frowns, brows drawn. Honestly, he’s not sure what he’s suggesting is the better idea. But surely he’ll need to do _something_.

Aziraphale starts to walk away.

“Wait, no! No don’t go. Please! Aziraphale!”

Crowley blesses angrily, the tears that have been threatening to build now falling freely. He hugs an arm around his brutalized ribs and sits there, dizzy and cold with pain, unable to move for fear he’ll simply fall over and get stuck there, sprawled graceless on the floor.

\--

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Aziraphale hisses. The one in his dreams, that is. 

Crowley blinks owlishly. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. “Hng?”

“Your wings, you foolish demon. Do you know where my blasted body is going, at this very moment? To fetch a knife. A big one!”

Crowley shifts his weight and ends up gasping for breath as the shattered, bony remains of his half-plucked wings pull with the motion. The sharp intake of air presses uncomfortably on his broken rib, adding insult to injury. 

Aziraphale’s hands find his shoulders, squeezing gently as the angel ducks his head, forcing Crowley to meet his eyes. “My dear, you mustn’t cut them off. It’s a terrible idea. I know it’s hard to think clearly, at the moment, but _do_ make an effort. Good lord.”

Crowley shivers violently, his stomach churning with nausea. “Can’t...keep them. Infection. Or worse.”

“If you stay here, I’m sure that’d be a possibility. Which is why I am telling you that it’s time for you to go.”

“Go?”

“ _Go_ , Crowley. The manacles are only meant to smother your powers. They wouldn’t prevent you from leaving the grounds. You could walk out the front door, if you timed it right.”

Crowley stares. What an idea. What a good idea! Except. “You? How...what about you?”

Aziraphale looks away. He fusses with Crowley’s collar, instead. “Oh, well. I’m sure I’d be quite all right.”

Crowley shakes his head vigorously. “No. Not a chance. Never.”

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale says, and it’s just the way he always says Crowley’s name when he’s exasperated beyond measure--a tone reserved for when Crowley sinks ducks at St. James’s.

Crowley squints at him. “Are you--?” He frowns, lifting a heavy hand and cupping the angel’s soft, rounded jaw. “Are you really here? Angel, are you real?”

Aziraphale’s shock is like a blow to the chest. “Am I--?” The angel’s blue eyes go abruptly damp, his mouth pursing into a twist of total dismay. “My dear, did you not know?”

Crowley’s grabs the angel by the shoulers, pulls him in, hides his own wet eyes away against Aziraphale’s neck. “No,” he says, muffled. “I didn’t.”

Aziraphale’s soft, choking sound is oddly comforting. “Oh, no. Oh, Crowley. I’m so terribly _sorry_.”

Crowley wakes up to the sensation of someone grabbing, hard, at the shattered pieces of his wing.

\--

“Wait, no!” Crowley shouts, falling backward in a panicked attempt to get away. Aziraphale--Aziraphale’s body? How is he meant to process this?--has one hand gripped tight around the humerus of Crowley’s right wing and what is, indeed, a bloody big knife in the other.

“Don’t! Don’t! I’ve changed my mind!”

Aziraphale’s body steps back, hands falling at his sides.

Crowley shudders through the renewed agony and adrenaline rush of what nearly happened. 

“All right,” Crowley says breath purposefully through his nose. “Fine, all right. It’s all fine.”

Aziraphale doesn’t seem affected. He just stares ahead, as always.

“Tell her,” Crowley tells him, once he has his breath back enough to do so. “Tell her I want to make a deal. And, and--send the inquisitor in here, first.”

Aziraphale goes. Crowley is certain he’ll follow through with the first order--it is, after all, relating to his Queen. Crowley’s less certain about the second, which is unfortunate because his entire plan rests on it.

\--

The Inquisitor does, in fact, return to his lab only a few minutes later. The fae man tilts his head, black eyes sharp with interest. “I thought you’d be dead.”

“Not yet,” Crowley says, reasonably. “I have an offer I’d like to extend to you, before I do, in fact, die.”

The Inquisitor’s head tilts even further. “I’m listening.”

\--

Crowley stands as tall as he can before the throne of the Queen. He lists slightly to the side more than once but, every time, manages to regain his footing. The world around him wavers, as insubstantial as bubbles in the breeze. He blinks hard, bringing everything into focus again. Sweat pours off his skin, dripping from his chin. He shivers violently, so hard that it rattles the tatters of his wings, knocking several more of the precious remaining feathers loose. Beneath the loosened squeeze of the once enchanted manacles, Crowley’s battered wrists throb in time with his corporation’s struggling heart. 

The Queen gazes upon him. Her eyes are a violent violet hue, the sort of unearthly color that reminds the demon, uncomfortably, of the archangel Gabriel’s disgusted stare. Slowly, too slowly for Crowley’s comfort, the regent nods her head. “I agree to the we have established terms. The wager shall begin immediately.” She turns to Aziraphale’s blank-faced aspect. “Go.”

Aziraphale’s body rushes Crowley without even a moment of hesitation. Before the angel quite reaches him, his corporation shifts its shape. A lion, large and golden-white appears in his place. Crowley wraps his arms around the beast, buries his face in the soft mane, does not so much as flinch when the beast’s great teeth sink into the flesh of his shoulder. 

He has to hold on. No matter what, he cannot let go. That’s all that he has been told, that is all that he must do.

The lion transforms into a giant white bull with terrible, twisted horns. Crowley wraps his legs around the fatty hump of the beast’s neck, clings to the base of the horns to prevent being skewered. The bull tosses his head back and forth and back again and still Crowley holds on.

The bull transforms into a large, snowy swan with flailing wings and a sharp, toothy beak. It nips hard Crowley’s ear, drawing blood, and Crowley wraps his arms around it all the more, even when its strong wings bash him in the chin.

The swan transforms into a dove and for one terrifying moment it seems obvious to all in witness--and Crowley himself--that he will lose his hold on the smaller form. But Crowley grasps the flapping bird between his palms, holding tight.

The dove becomes a spider, becomes a scorpion, becomes a circlet of metal--just like the ones once in his wings--that burns red hot as if fresh from a blacksmith’s fire. Crowley is bit, is stung, is burned. He holds on.

The hot loop of metal transforms into a tiny mouse that very nearly slips through Crowley’s clasped, blistered fingers. Crowley, however, has prepared for this. He has an ace up his sleeve, as it were, courtesy of one highly inquisitive fae who has always longed to see Crowley’s other form in its entirety. Now, the Inquisitor has his opportunity. 

Crowley transforms into a snake. The long-dismantled manacles around his wrists snap with the pressure of the transition. Crowley wraps his coils around the small white mouse, holding it firm.

The mouse transforms into a roaring flame. Crowley tightens his coils, immerses himself in the fire, does not allow himself to panic as it licks up his scales and sears into his flesh. 

The flames transform into a man-shaped being, naked as a babe and seemingly just as confused by the large, noisy world. Crowley’s smoking coils tighten around Aziraphale’s shoulders, more of an embrace than a restraint, now. Crowley lets his serpentine head drop, exhausted, against the angel’s collarbone.

Aziraphale gets to his feet. He clears his throat and straightens his spine, meeting the Queen eye for eye. “The wager is completed,” the angel says, voice sharp enough to kill. “I believe my companion and I are now free to go?”

The Queen pauses but gives a single sharp nod of her head. “Very well. We thank you for your patronage.”

Aziraphale, bless him, somehow manages not to retort. In a snap, he miracles himself up some clothes--not the fairy finery he has worn for ages, now, but his usual old-fashioned garb.

“We were, admittedly, growing tired of you, anyway, dear angel,” the Queen adds, out of sheer spite, no doubt.

Aziraphale hums in recognition of that fact and nods his head at her in a bow far more shallow than her station demands. “Come along, dear,” the angel says to Crowley, gently stroking a finger over the snake’s head.

And the angel and the demon leave the oppressive beauty of the fairy court. 

They do not, in fact, ever go back.

\--

Crowley wakes and finds it strange that he has not dreamed. But then, he wonders, is he not dreaming, now? He blinks slowly, easing himself upright on Aziraphale’s couch in the familiar expanse of the angel’s cramped back room.

Some details are certainly different. There’s no warm light, for one. The room is dim and rather cold. And, most importantly, it’s utterly empty except for himself. 

Fear stabs into Crowley’s heart, makes him cry out the angel’s name in terror before he can think better of it.

Footsteps, rapid and heavy. Aziraphale pops into the room, cheeks pinked and eyes wide and full of _such_ concern, such care, that Crowley leans in toward it like a flower to the sun. “You’re awake! Good. I thought--well, it doesn’t matter. How do you feel?”

Crowley’s mind churns that question over. “Awful?” he hazards.

Aziraphale looks rather sheepish. “Yes, I suppose that’s the obvious answer, isn’t it? May I?”

Crowley hasn’t a clue what he’s being asked, but he nods, anyway. Aziraphale can do whatever he damn well pleases, as far as the demon is concerned. 

Aziraphale sits beside him on the couch. Crowley stares at him, taking it all in. Aziraphale is thinner, paler, and more cautious than he would be, if it were a dream. Carefully, the angel peels a thick bandage back from Crowley’s shoulder. The demon stares at the prominent mark of teeth.

“What--?”

“The lion,” Aziraphale says, quietly. “I’m sorry. I very much was not in my right mind, at the time.”

Crowley blinks in acknowledgement of that. He knows that. He probably knows that better than Aziraphale, come to think of it. The demon frowns at his equally bandaged hands.

“Scorpion sting. Various bite marks. Burned palms. From the, er, the hot metal bit. I’m afraid there’s rather more burn marks all over you. From the fire.”

Crowley nods. “All right,” he agrees, dully. He swallows thicky, abruptly queasy and dizzy in a way that is far too familiar. “M’still feeling sick.”

Aziraphale’s careful hands go still for a moment. “That I’m afraid I’m not quite sure how to fix. I can see the trouble, when I look at you just so. Your aura, my dear, it’s...not quite right, is it?”

“Inquisitor. Pulled my demonic form out of my body and messed with it. I don’t--not sure how. I don’t want to think about it.”

“That’s fine,” the angel agrees quickly, “You don’t have to. I’m sure it’s--I’m sure we can sort it all out, in time.”

Crowley goes silent, allowing Aziraphale to do whatever he’s doing. Prodding at open wounds, mostly, it feels like. 

“I should--that is, your wings really ought--.”

“Angel? Can you--can we stop, for a minute?”

Aziraphale pulls away. “Of course. Am I hurting you? I’m sorry.”

Crowley shakes his head. “Stop apologizing. Listen. Can you...hold still? Just. Can you just look at me, for a while?”

Aziraphale’s brows draw in, but he nods readily enough. He turns more fully on the couch and, obligingly, meets Crowley’s eyes. “Bit strange. What am I meant to be doing, exactly?”

“What you’re doing,” Crowley assures him, relaxing bodily under the warm--if confused--light of Aziraphale’s focused, present gaze. “What you’re doing is great.”

\--

Fin


End file.
